Premier League Kits Made by £1/Hour Cambodian Workers — SkimNews
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- Workers at Bowker Garment Factory and Trax Apparel in Cambodia produce official replica shirts for Arsenal, Celtic, Liverpool and Real Madrid on basic monthly salaries of $210-$220 (£158-£166), with total earnings around $300 once overtime is included, per five payslips seen by the BBC.
- Employees at both factories described working up to 700 items a day in temperatures above 35°C, receiving verbal abuse when quotas were missed, and electric shocks from exposed wiring at Bowker — conditions Adidas disputed, citing its workplace standards and audit records.
- A 2024 International Labour Organization report found 69% of Cambodian garment factories had heat issues and 84% had worker-protection issues, placing the two Adidas suppliers within an industry-wide pattern, the Clean Clothes Campaign noted.
- Of a typical £85 replica shirt, £37.45 goes to the retailer, £16.25 to the manufacturer, £9.50 to marketing, £13.60 in VAT and just £8.50 covers fabric, sewing and shipping, per industry research cited by the BBC.
- Average adult replica Premier League shirt prices have risen 50.7% over the past decade, pushing fans toward £12 counterfeits — many originating in China — and prompting warnings from police and Trading Standards about safety and worker-rights risks.
- Adidas, which supplies eight of the 20 Premier League clubs, told the BBC it runs around 1,200 factory audits a year and that audited wages run 34% above Anker Research Institute's living-wage benchmark, while Nike (three Premier League clubs plus England) said 71% of its key suppliers meet living-wage benchmarks.
- Arsenal, Aston Villa, Celtic, Liverpool and Real Madrid — the clubs whose shirts were traced to the two factories — all declined to comment, as did Hummel; the Premier League said it expects clubs to conduct due diligence on kit supply chains.
Why it matters: With replica shirt prices up 50.7% in a decade, the investigation puts pressure on the eight Adidas-supplied Premier League clubs — and the league's own due-diligence framework — to account for the £37.45-per-shirt retailer share versus the £158-a-month wages of the workers behind their kits, while a wave of £12 counterfeits signals fans have already priced themselves out of the official market.
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